Just about the first person to actually arrive was Chief Morris, grim-faced and angry. “Goddamnit, Willy, you are about to spend a long time in my jail for this.” Then he saw the ships. “Oh, Jesus.”
Willy knew when he had the upper hand. “Yeah, looks like that big liner’s in some kind of trouble and the others are gonna help it out.”
Morris quickly agreed with the evaluation. The liner was obviously aground; although he thought there was plenty of water where the ship was, maybe a sandbar had shifted. What was the damned thing doing so close to shore in the first place?
“Wow, what a sight!”
The comment came from Homer Walls, the owner of the hotel and publisher of the summer weekly. Homer also had the town’s only telephone.
Morris grabbed his arm. “Homer, I think you ought to call someone in the big city and tell them what’s happened.”
Homer smirked. “Did that already. Called theNew York Post.” Then he looked a little chagrined. “They weren’t as excited as I thought they would be. Seems there were a bunch of explosions and fires all over the city last night and everyone’s in an uproar about them. ThePost seemed to think they were caused by labor agitators or something and didn’t particularly give a damn about a ship aground off Ardmore.”
Morris grunted and continued to watch. By this time a number of the townspeople had gathered, and others were coming as quickly as they could. It was apparent that the sight was drawing people from as far away as they could run to the beach. Chief Morris’s wife and four-year-old daughter joined him and brought his telescope. He noticed a number of other spectators using telescopes as well.
“Hey, Homer,” Morris said. “Guess what? That isn’t an American ship. Looks like a German flag.”
“Yeah,” Homer replied. “And those don’t look like American flags on the warships either.”
After further discussion they decided there was no reason why a German ship couldn’t have run aground. As to the German ships helping out, well, why not? Only thing was, the liner didn’t look aground; instead it seemed to be floating freely and held in place by its anchor.
The crowd grew even more excited when the warships lowered boats and sent men over to the liner. Shortly after, the lifeboats on the liner filled with men and were lowered to the water.
“Chief, are all those people on the boats wearing the same thing? Like uniforms?” asked Homer.
“Yep, and those look like rifles they’re carrying.”
“Holy shit,” yelled Homer. “Now I am going to get those assholes in New York to pay attention!” With that, he ran off toward his hotel and the telephone.
The lifeboats gathered in a group and commenced to row toward shore. It was obvious that the sailors from the warships were working the oars while those who seemed to be soldiers sat and waited. For what? Chief Morris wondered.
As the boats rowed closer to shore, the crowd, now quite large, drew nearer to the beach, almost by instinct. On board the closest German ship, the light cruiserGazelle, the captain looked on that movement with dismay. What had once been a lonely stretch of sand was now packed with people. Were they armed? Of course they were! All Americans were riflemen, and wasn’t this part of the country the home of the Minutemen?
The captain of theGazelle looked at the soldiers huddled helplessly in the little boats, jammed so tightly they couldn’t raise their arms and fire back if they wished to. Almost three hundred men being rowed toward shore and all of them possibly heading for a slaughter. He couldn’t take the chance. His duty was clear.
“Open fire on the beach!”
Within seconds half a dozen of his ten 4.1-inch guns roared, sending shells into the packed humanity at virtually point-blank range, while machine guns on the deck clattered and scythed the human crop on the beach. The explosions hurled sand and bodies into the air. The survivors swirled, like leaves in a vagrant wind, not knowing what to do, then turned and ran away from the ships and toward the town. A second broadside was fired with the same deadly results: the gun captains had calculated the retreat and sighted their weapons accordingly.
Inside the hotel, Homer had indeed made contact with New York and now they were interested, very interested, particularly about the soldiers. When the ships opened fire, Homer screamed in disbelief into the open phone and, sobbing, described the carnage on the beach. He was still trying to report when a shell from the third volley crashed into the hotel, destroying it and blowing the life out of his body.
Instead of fleeing inland with the others, a panic-stricken Willy Talmadge screamed and ran down the beach as fast as his thin legs could propel him. He was unharmed.
Blake Morris turned and ran from the beach as soon as he saw the guns fire. The concussions hurled him to the ground and momentarily deafened him. He rose quickly and looked for his wife. She too was running from the beach. Her skirts were hiked up around her hips, and she was carrying their screaming daughter in her arms. Morris automatically figured them to be about a hundred yards ahead, and he started moving faster than he ever thought possible to reach them.
There had to be screams, perhaps even his own, but he could hear nothing. He tried to yell for her to hurry, prayed for her to hurry.
Suddenly, the earth about her opened up and a mountain of dirt leaped for the sky. Later, he would desperately try to recall if he saw her and the child in that explosion, but he could never be certain.
He lurched forward to the smoking crater. There was nothing. He looked about and saw pieces of cloth on the ground and bits of things that were red. He screamed, and this time he could hear it.
On board theGazelle, the German captain called a cease-fire. The mob on the shore was no longer a threat. The lifeboats were on the sand and the soldiers already disembarking and fanning out in open skirmish formation. He peered through his telescope at the lifeless bodies on the beach and elsewhere, ignoring the fleeing survivors who were fast disappearing into the nearby woods. Search as he might, he could not see any weapons. His heart filled with a sickened dread. There had to be weapons. Dear God, there had to be weapons. Please.
Patrick Mahan stretched his six-foot body on the stiff cot. After so many years in the military, he still found it difficult to get comfortable on one of the damned things. He was surprised that he had slept at all, but he obviously had.
The clock on the wall told him it was six in the morning of Monday, June 3, 1901. He remembered that he was in the war room on the second level of the White House.
He stood up, and his rustling alerted a servant, who came in with a bowl of water and a cloth to refresh him. Equally important, he directed him to the little room down the hall where he could relieve the suddenly intense pressures on his bladder and bowels. The same servant told him they had taken the liberty of cleaning and pressing the uniforms and clothing in his baggage.
Mind and body clear, he changed into a uniform and sipped a cup of coffee. He had to admit that the service was excellent; he could easily get used to staying at the White House. If only they provided something better than cots.
He turned at the sound of footsteps. Teddy Roosevelt entered, his face grim. “I hope you slept well.” When Patrick assured him he had, Roosevelt continued. “It appears things are happening. The phone lines to New York came up a few moments ago, and the New York papers are saying there’ve been fires and explosions in both the city and the harbor. They also say a number of strange ships have been sighted either in or approaching the harbor.”
Roosevelt stared at the silent phones and telegraph in the war room. “Of course, no one thought to tell us first.” He sighed. “Perhaps they assumed we already knew. After all, we are the government. By the way, I have not told McKinley. Let the man rest while he can. That is also why I didn’t waken you.”